Need a Better Story

"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know
that you would lie if you were in his place."
-Henry Louis Mencken

My Mom raised me better. She really did. She's the most honest person I've ever known. She literally will NOT tell a lie, even for a good cause like a surprise party. She's so honest that you almost can't talk to her from November to December unless you want to know what you're getting for Christmas.

Somehow this quality escaped both my twin sister Jennifer and I during our childhood. Don't get me wrong, we were good kids. Well, Jennifer was. I was too, until I started talking.

But we both had imaginations that were somehow bigger than us. We told the truth in the end, most of the time at least, I think… But you just never knew what we were going to come up with next. Heck, we didn't even know…


IT was the beginning of my Senior Year in High School. I'd been traveling in and out of the country over the summer with a group and had spent a good portion of the time in Australia. When I showed up to the first day of school on crutches after spraining my ankle, everyone wanted to know what had happened.

So naturally, Jennifer and I told them that I'd been diving off of the Great Barrier Reef and had been attacked by a shark. When we realized we'd taken that story a bit too far (like I should have been missing a leg to go with it) we changed it to my foot getting stuck in the coral while I'd been snorkeling and nearly drowning. (Our version of toning it down…) SO much more interesting and less humiliating than the truth- that I sprained my ankle by running from the sprinkler in my parent's front yard.


THEN there was that one day back in elementary school. Unbeknown to me, Jennifer had cut out a wallet sized picture of a tall, dark, handsome man that looked like he'd stepped out of an Old Spice commercial.

Me: Where in the WORLD did you get that?

Jennifer: Oh I got it out of a picture frame from the store. Take a look at what I wrote on the back of it!

"My darling Melanie. The love of my life...."

Bright red ink trailed crookedly off the page as the note ended abruptly, as if the writer had fallen asleep in the midst of penning the note.

Jennifer grinned as she pointed to the note. "That's when your boyfriend died. When he was writing this note to you."

I looked again at the picture of this guy a good twenty years my senior and back at her. "No one is EVER going to believe you."

But lo and behold, hours later, a group of fifth grade girls stood around my solemn-faced sister, their faces a mixture of shock, awe, and grief at my loss.


THEN there was the time Jennifer told our fifth grade class that the reason our elderly teacher was so nice to me was because I'd beaten her up after school one day. So she was actually AFRAID of me. Though I'd never shown a hint of violence at school or even a temper, this solemn proclamation from my normally quiet-as-a-mouse sister literally followed me to High School.

I think all this was really my fault, you see. When we were younger I made up an answer to pretty much anything Jennifer asked me. Even if I knew the answer. The one I had in my head was SO much better.

The bad part was, was that unlike the stories she told people in school, I never "eventually" told her the truth. There were just too many stories to keep track of. So many that I couldn't even remember them. Well, at least until I'd overhear her talking to somebody about how the government placed Porta Potties along railroad tracks, in case you couldn't make it to the closest gas station. The poor kid never had a chance…


PRESENT DAY….
Well, I sprained AND broke my ankle last week. That's as exciting as the story gets. You see, it happened when I was WALKING SLOWLY to my car. Seriously. Walking…No curb, no saving a child from a runaway car, no skydiving incident. Just walking.

WAY too anti-climatic…

I've had dozens of people in the last week ask what's happened and I told them all that I'm going to have to get back to them on it because the real story is just too boring to tell. So, if you have a better story for me, I welcome any ideas and promise to tell the truth in the end. Really. ;-)

It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course,
you are an exceptionally good liar.
-Jerome K. Jerome


"Tell all the truth, but tell it slant, success in circuit lies...The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind."
- Emily Dickinson


“If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.”
-Mark Twain

"Tell the truth and RUN."
- Yugoslavian proverb.

My new BFF... (Has air pockets I can inflate and everything- Seriously!) Seven Springs Orthopaedic's are AWESOME!! Though I'm hoping to never see them again after this is over, they truly do ROCK!

**WARNING- Don't scroll down any further if you get grossed out easily.
Guys this one is for you... ***

What you can't see here is that the bruise wraps around the bottom of one side of my foot, AND now a few of my toes are starting to turn blue. My first thought when I saw this? "Suhhhhweet!" I know I'm weird...